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Its Origin, Rise, Progress and Results. 

AN ADDRESS 

DELIVERED BEFORE THE 

American Colonization Society. 

JANUARY 20th, 1880, 



BY 



Hon JOHN H. B. LATROBE, 



President of tJic Society 



SECOND EDITION. 



WASHINGTON CITY: 
Colonization Building, 450 Pennsylvania Avenue. 
1883, 



In E*civ 




Origin, Rise, Progress and Results. 



AN ADDRESS 

DELIVERED BEFORE THE 

erican Colonization Society, 

JANUARY 30i4i:i88b, \ :'• 



Hon JOHN H. B. LATROBE, 



President of the Society 



SECOND EDITION 



WASHINGTON CITY: 
Colonization Building, 450 Pennsylvania Avenue. 

1883. 



ADDRESS 



Members of the American Colonization Society, 

Ladies and Gentlemen :— 
One who has spoken as often as I have done on the subject of Af- 
rican Colonization can hardly hope to say anything that he has not 
said before. My audiences, however, have not always been the same, 
and in the belief that some of my present hearers now listen to me for 
the first time, I propose to give a brief account of the origin and forma- 
tion of the American Colonization Society, its condition now and the 
aspect generally of the cause to which, for more than half a century, 
it has been devoted. I wish for your sakes that there was more of ro- 
mance in what I am about to state. Still, even in this aspect, African 
Colonization and its offspring, Liberia, are not wholly without their 
interest. 

Success is never without claimants to its paternity, and our cause 
has had many supposed fathers. The existence, however, in our midst, 
of a race that was to remain forever a distinct one, must, at an early day, 
have suggested to many the idea of separation, and taking into view 
all the circumstances with the idea of separation, Africa naturally pre- 
sented itself. In 1773 the Reverend Doctor Hopkins of Rhode Island 
proposed to educate two colored youths and send them there as mis- 
sionaries, when his friend, Dr. Stiles, suggested that some thirty or 
forty suitable persons of the same color should accompany them and 
make a settlement on the Gold coast under the general direction of a 
society in America. The settlers were to be employed in agricultural, 
mechanical and commercial pursuits. This certainly was the germ of 
African colonization. Nothing came of it, however. The muttering 
thunder of the coming Revolution drowned all thought save that of 
Independence. Neither did anything come of Dr. Thornton's idea of 
taking a company of free blacks to Africa in 1787 and founding a col- 
ony ; nor was anything more heard of African colonization until 1793, 
when Dr. Hopkins, elaborating the plan of Dr. Stiles, published a ser- 
mon that he had preached before the Connecticut Emancipation Soci- 
ety with an appendix, that advocated just such a plan as has since 
been adopted by the American Colonization Society. Neither did any- 
thing come of this. The fulness of time had not arrived ; nor was it un- 



tL1deL f °tW t r yearSa i terD0Ct0rS H ° pkinS and StiIeshad originated 
the dea that .t assumed a practical shape. In this year, Paul Cuffee 
a - co ored ruau of Massachusetts, who probably had heard of it carried 
m h s own vessel commanded by himself, at a cost of $4,000 paid by 

S er a Leone" ° ■ ^ B ° St ° n t0 the E ^ ish * 

s rumet aT"' " • ^ ° f * S ° dety ^ he had in- 

UntedStt T ,nS : n , a PreVi ° US VOyage ' and returning to the 
United States, died m the following year. Born in New Bedford in 
.759. in poverty and obscurity, he had won wealth and respectabiiitv 
by industry mteUigence and integrity ; and " moved," as he !aid b a 
desire to ra.se his brethren in the United States to civil and re. g ious Hb- 

0^1, ° ftheirf r efatherS; ' hadthus takenthe -^ive in 

practical coloration. In the rushing currents of events, the hum- 
bier individuals who have added to the volume or influenced the di- 
rection of the stream are often overwhelmed and lost sight of So it 
has been with Paul Cuffee. But his name should never L omitted in 
even the bnefest history of African Colonization 

It must not be supposed, however, that Africa was the only place 
thought of along with the idea of a separation of the two races "The 
Spanish and Portuguese settlements in South America," "a suitable 
temtory ,n Louisiana," and "the vast territory," as it was then called 
between the Ohio river and the great lakes," were successively dis 
cussed, as places to which the Negro race in America, as it became 
. free, might advantageously emigrate. At a meeting at which theTst 
named found advocates, a person present is reported to have sa d 
Whether any of us will live to see it or not, the time will come when 
white men will want all that region, will have it, and our colony w£ 
be overwhelmed by them." Notwithstanding all this difference of 

ZTsi tit"''/ r WiC mind ChryStalized at "Pon Africa as 
tne best location for the proposed colony 

Paul Cuffee died in 18,6, and in December of the same year the 
American Colonization Society was organized. Foremost among its 
founders was Robert Finley of New Jersey. Inseason and out of sef son 
he toflec m its behalf. He declared that he " knew the scheme was 
wil™ ^ thiscoavicta - to sustain him he imbued numbers 

with an equal enthusiasm. Finley, however, soon found that it was 
one thing for public meetings to applaud his zeal and admit the ex- 
pediency of his plans, and a very different thing to induce his hearers 
to take active measures to promote them; and there is no telling 

ctl ,cs r M n 7 h,raSeI l mi S ht nMha - become discouraged, had no! 
Charles Marsh, a member of Congress from Vermont, come to his as- 
sistance. The plan, Marsh said, was too good and noble to be pe - 



5 



mitted to fail ; and it is owing to what has been- called his " inex- 
haustible adroitness and persistency," that a preliminary meeting 
was held, with Henry Clay as chairman. Elias B. Caldwell, Finley's 
brother-in-law, and clerk of the Supreme Court, was the chief speaker ; 
Robert Wright, of Maryland, submitted a constitution, which was 
adopted ; and at the first meeting under it, Mr. Justice Bushrod Wash- 
ington was elected President. In this way, the American Coloniza- 
tion Society came into existence, forty-three years after Dr. Hopkins 
and his friend, Dr. Stiles, had suggested the idea. They, it seems, had 
regarded it as a missionary enterprise only. There were others, how- 
ever, who hoped that it would lead to the separation of the free Negroes 
from what the masters said was an injurious contact with their slaves. 
Others, like Paul Cuffee, who believed that it would tend to raise the 
Negroes of the United States to civil and religious liberty in the land 
of their forefathers. Others again supported it as likely to promote 
emancipation. Others, who looked forward to the commerce that 
would follow the establishment of a colony on the borders of a vast 
continent, which would be a virgin market for the products of a man- 
ufacturing civilization that was already threatening to glut the known 
markets of the world ; and others again who fancied that, in some 
undefined way, African colonization would afford a solution of the 
Negro question in this country. And it was well that all this was so. 
Co-operation, regardless of motive, was the necessity of the occasion. 
However varied the views of the friends of the Society respectively, 
all were agreed upon the establishment of a colony to which the free 
people of color might emigrate, when they believed they would better 
their condition by seeking a new home beyond the sea ; and Liberia 
stands to the credit of them all. 

The Society having been organized, a site for the settlement was 
to be selected ; and for this purpose Mills" and Burgess were sent to 
Africa in 1818, and fixed upon Sherbro Island, not far from Sierra Le- 
one. To this place the Reverend Samuel Bacon, an Episcopal cler- 
gyman, led the first expedition in the ship Elisabeth, in 1820. The 
vessel had been chartered by the United States under the following 
circumstances. Congress had made it penal to import slaves after 
the year 1807, and in 181 8 had increased the penalty. A law as then 
passed, Oct. 3, 1 819, of which Charles Fenton Mercer, of Virginia, 
was the author, which provided that slaves illegally imported, or 
taken at sea, should be held in custody of the United States until re- 
moved from the country; and the President was authorized to appoint 
an agent to take care of them. Mr. Monroe, then President, saw at 
once, that by co-operating with the American Colonization Society, 



6 



the design of the law might be carried out, both equitably and eco- 
nomically; and he appointed Mr. Bacon, along with Mr. John P. 
Bankson, of Philadelphia, as agents of the Government, placing in 
the hands of Mr. Bacon sufficient funds out of moneys appropriated 
by Congress under the act of 1819. The Elizabeth took out eighty- 
six emigrants from the United States, who in consideration of their 
passage and other aid, were to prepare suitable accommodations for 
such Africans as might be rescued from the slave-ships by American 
cruisers. In this way, strange as it seems, it was to the slave-trade, 
whkh it was to aid in extirpating, that the American Colonization 
Society became indebted, through the wise course of President Mon- 
roe, for its first feeble foothold on the Continent of Africa. 

The undertaking had, notwithstanding the aid derived from the 
United States, a most unfortunate beginning. Mills had died on his 
way back to America, and Bacon, dying in Africa, was among the first 
martyrs to the cause buried there under its palms. Of four agents 
sent out in 1821, two died on the coast, and two returned sick to the 
United States. Sherbro Island was found to be unhealthy and was 
abandoned ; and the survivors of the Elizabeth 's emigrants returned 
disheartened to Sierra Leone. 

In November, 1820, the President dispatched the armed schooner 
Alligator, Captain R. F. Stockton, of New Jersey, to the oast on a 
voyage of exploration, Here in the following year, 1821, he fell in 
with Dr. Eli Ayres, an agent of the Society, and taking him on board, 
proceeded southerly, and after passing Sherbro Island, selected, in 
conjunction with Dr. Ayres, a suitable territory 250 miles from Sierra 
Leone, including Cape Mesurado, a bold promontory on the east side 
of a river of the same name. To this new site Dr. Ayres now removed 
the remnant of the Elizabeth's emigrants, landing them on an island 
separated from the mam land by a narrow creek that extended from 
near the mouth of the Mesurado river to the St. Paul's. Very soon 
after the arrival of the emigrants, the native chiefs opened their eyes 
to the probability of their interference with the slave trade which had 
long prevailed in the neighborhood ; and, regardless of the treaty by 
which they had ceded the territory, determined to destroy the settle- 
ment if they could. The temporary dwellings, that had been slightly 
and hastily put up, were consumed by fire. On the heel of this came 
African fever : and so untoward were circumstances, that Dr. Ayres, 
almost in dispair, returned with some of the colonists to Sierra Leone. 
Wiltberger, another of the Society's agents, remained, however ; bat- 
tled with the natives, and abandoning the island, crossed the Mesu- 
rado river to the adjacent cape ; cleared away the forest to make 



room for new huts in a healthier i^ja.ion; completed and occupied 
them ; and in this way, in June 1822, laid the corner stone of the Re- 
public of Liberia on the spot where its capital now stands. Dr. Ayres 
and Wiltberger then returned to the United States, leaving the set- 
tlement in charge of Elijah Johnson, an emigrant who had refused 
to follow Dr. Ayres to the British colony. " No," he said ; " I have 
been two years searching for a home, and I have found it, and I shall 
stay here :" and when he was afterwards surrounded by hostile and 
threatening bodies of natives, and was offered the protection of a 
guard of marines from a passing British vessel of war if he would cede 
a few feet of ground on which to plant a flagstaff for a British flag, 
he refused the proffered aid, saying, " We want no flagstaff put up 
here that will cost more to get it down than it will cost to whip the 
natives." Johnson was another man of the Paul Cuffee stamp, whose 
name cannot be omitted from a notice of Liberia, however brief. 
Slender was the hold which colonization and religion had upon this 
portion of the Dark Continent ; and but for the construction that Mr. 
Monroe had given to the law of 1819, even this hold might never have 
been obtained, or have been indefinitely delayed. 

The first arrival at Cape Mesurado after the departure of Wilt- 
berger, was a vessel from Baltimore with fifty-one emigrants, a part of 
whom were recaptured Africans, in August, 1822. It was in charge 
of Jehudi Ashmun, Priest, Soldier and Statesman. He had intended 
to return to the United States bv the same vessel; but Africa needed 
him more than America, and he remained. Ashmun's mission was 
one of peace, and he exhausted every effort in striving to preserve it ; 
but in vain. Boatswain, a powerful native chief from the interior, 
and a friend of the colonists from the beginning, had left the coast, 
where his presence had restrained their enemies; and hostilities com- 
menced at once. All supplies of provisions were cut eff, and theft 
and depredation were the order of the day. The native chiefs, the 
very ones who had sold the land, would listen to no terms of accom- 
modation. With Ashmun it was now battle or famine unto death, 
with the greatest doubts as to the result. Then, the Christian minis- 
ter became a military leader. He planned fortifications ; he mounted 
cannon; he distributed ammunition ; he posted picket guards ; and, 
above all, he insi>ired his twenty-seven Americans and thirteen African 
youths with his own intrepid spirit. On the 24th of August, twelve o 
his men were stricken down by fever, at a time when it was necessary 
to have twenty sentinels on guard, day and night. At the end of three 
weeks of constant watchfulness, Ashmun himself was prostrated by- 
disease. His wife, too, who had accompanied him from America, was 



8 



dangerously ill. On the ioth of September, only two of the late arri- 
vals were fit for duty. And yet, there could be no relaxation of vigilance,, 
the alternative of which was death. After a night of fever and deli- 
rium, morning would find the agent superintending the stockades, 
or clearing away the forest in front of his few pieces of artillery. In 
this way, sometimes better, sometimes worse in health, Ashmun lived 
until the nth of November, when eight hundred natives made a con- 
centrated attack on his most outlying stockade, carried it, and had they 
not stopped to plunder some adjacent huts, could have swept the set- 
tlement by one determined rush into the sea. Danger so imminent 
was a tonic that not even African fever could withstand. Ashmun 
rallied the men retreating from the stockade, brought a cannon to 
bear upon the plunderers, headed a charge as they hesitated, panic- 
striken by the fire — retook the stockade — drove the natives to the 
cover of the forest, and the colony was saved. 

On the 30th of November there was another attack, thrice re- 
newed and as often repulsed, during whieh •Ashmun had three bul- 
lets through his clothes, but escaped unhurt. This terminated the 
war. It was the first and last that ever threatened the existence of Li- 
beria. An English schooner,passing Cape Mesurado, had been attract- 
ed by the firing. Laing, the African traveler, happened to be on board; 
and through his intervention a treaty of peace was made with the 
native chiefs, which, in the main, has not been disturbed. Each suc- 
ceeding year, however, strengthened the colony with emigrants from 
the United States. The first arrival was accompanied by Dr. Ayres, 
who, displacing Ashmun, had the town of Monrovia laid out, and the 
land adjacent surveyed and distributed among the colonists. He 
was then, again, seized with African fever, and returned to the United 
States. His departure left the colony in confusion; when Ashmun, 
overcoming his mortification at having been superseded by Dr. Ayres, 
assumed the charge of affairs, restored order by his firm and judicious 
measures, and remained until prostrated by disease, when, with but 
the faintest hope of saving his life, he. sailed for the Cape de Verde, 
leaving the colony again in charge of Elijah Johnson, who has been 
already mentioned. At the Cape de Verde Ashmun found the Rev. 
R. R. Gurley on his way to Monrovia, with full power from the 
United States Government and the Society to examine into the con- 
dition of affairs, and to establish some form of government. As soon 
as Ashmun's health permitted, he returned with Mr. Gurley to the 
colony ; when the two prepared a constitution, republican in form, 
which was submitted to the people in the first rude house of worship 
erected in Liberia. Here it was adopted ; and all present pledged 



8 



themselves solemnly before God to support it ; and this was the be- 
ginning of law and order in the colony. Mr. Gurley then returned to 
the United States, in August, 1824, leaving the government in the 
hands of Mr. Ashmun. 

At this time the slave trade was active within sight of Monrovia. 
Fifteen vessels were engaged in it under the guns almost of the colony , 
and there was a contract between a slave-trader and a native chief by 
which 800 slaves were to be furnished within four months at a place 
only eight miles from the Cape. Mr. Ashmun, in 1822, had be:n on 
the defensive. He now assumed the offensive in the cause of hu- 
manity. A Spanish slaver had committed a flagrant act of piracy on 
an English brig lying ' off Monrovia; and the agent determined to 
punish it. The brig was placed at his disposal, and embarking with 
fifty-four men, then his entire military force, he landed at the slave 
factory, released the slaves he found there, and, with the pi-estige 
thus obtained, succeeded in making a treaty with the native chief, 
which broke up the slave trade at that place forever. The destruc- 
tion of the slave factories at Tradetown followed. Here he was as- 
sisted by two Colombian vessels of war which happened to be on the 
coast. These exploits of the agent of the American Colonization 
Society did more towards the suppression of the slave trade west of 
the Bight of Benin, than the presence of English and American 
cruisers for years had been able to accomplish. A fast sailing vessel 
filled with slaves might succeed in escaping a blockading fleet ; but 
when the barracoons that supplied the cargo were destroyed, the 
trade at that factory was at an end. 

For five years Mr. Ashmun continued to be the agent of the So- 
ciety in Liberia, ever battling with disease, and until the 25th of 
March, 1828, when, accompanied to the beach by the inhabitants of 
Monrovia, in tears, he left Africa never to return. On the 10th of 
August, after a brief delay in the West Indies, he landed in New 
Haven, and died there on the 25th, a victim to his labors in the cause 
of African Colonization — its Hero and its Martyr. 

Since 1828, the Society has been so prominent, and the press has 
kept the public so well informed of events in Liberia, that it is enough 
to say now, that the expectations of the founders have been realized 
in the establishment of a Republic, where the slave trade once reigned 
supreme ; with institutions modelled after our own ; with a govern- 
ment well administered and recognized by the civilized nations of the 
world ; with a commerce steadily increasing ; with a coast line ex- 
tending from the English colony of Sierra Leone to the San Pedro 
river, east of Cape Palmas, and offering to intelligence and industry 



10 



a home, where, in the land of their forefathers, the colored men of 
America may strive for and obtain all the rewards of honorable am- 
bition. That Liberia will, one day, count its population by millions 
instead, as now, by thousands, we believe to be as certain as Destiny. 

The eyes of the world may be said to be fixed upon Africa to-day. 
England, at the south, is extending her many arms northward from 
the Cape of Good Hope. England and France take charge of the 
Khedive on the north. The King of Belgium sends exploring expe- 
ditions from Zanzibar on the east, and English, Portuguese and Dutch 
traders, on the west, cluster around the mouth of the Livingstone at 
Embomma. All are striving for the trade of Africa, and value its 
civilization only as a means of improving the markets that this Conti- 
nent affords for the surplus products of the forge and loom. Far no- 
bler than all that has been effected by king or trader is the work of 
this Society, which, apart from its effect upon our colored popula- 
tion, and regarding it only in its missionary aspect, has furnished a 
nation for the task that no other human agency is competent to ac- 
complish — the task of civilizing as well as Christianizing a mighty 
continent — a nation, which, increasing in numbers by immigration, 
just as Plymouth and Jamestown increased of old, will do for Africa 
what the Pilgrims north and south have done for us, and until the 
Dark Continent shall be dark no longer. 

So much for the past history of the Society and Liberia ; a few 
words now in regard to their relations to the future. 

Colonization ists, as a rule, have believed that two distinct races, 
that cannot or will not amalgamate by intermarriage, can live in the 
same land in but one of two relations — master and slave, or oppressor 
and oppressed. The first is now out of the question, for slavery is at 
an end, here, forever, How stands it then with the other alternative ? 
Can there be any oppression when the two races occupy the same 
level before the law? There would be none, if Constitutional 
amendments and Acts of Congress sufficed to overcome the preju- 
dices and the influences of caste. To this extent they are absolutely 
powerless. The oppression of law which made the Negro a slave no 
longer exists. He may be, as he has been, a Senator or Representa- 
tive ; but the oppression of circumstances is as potent to-day as it was 
an hundred years ago. The question of slavery has bee'n settled, but 
the Negro question is still an open one. 

During the late war, few emigrants went to Liberia ; and when it 
closed there were people who said that the American Colonization 
Society must die ; and there were those, among its friends even, who 
stood ready to inter it, with a laudatory epitaph upon its tomb. And 



II 



yet the emigration that followed the war was greater than had ever 
taken place in the same number of years before : and now there are 
applications representing 200,000 persons begging the Society for 
transportation to Africa ; and this, too, where for years the Society 
has had no agent in the field whence the applications come. Cir- 
cumstances are doing their work. To understand them in detail, it 
is only necessary to read the publications explaining the motives of 
those who led in the late exodus movement in South Carolina, or in 
the later exodus from the southern States to Kansas. All are con- 
nected more or less directly with the distinction of caste that operates 
oppression. Colonizationists believe that the more education re- 
fines the Negro and increases his sensibilities, the more irksome will 
become his position where the distinctions of race exclude him 
socially from what cannot but be the aim of his ambition. When it 
is found, as the generations pass, that neither wealth nor scholarship 
nor accomplishments, however varied, overcome the prejudices that 
cause social exclusion, these very incidents may prompt the edu- 
cated and ambitious to seek a land where the white man will be to 
them what they are to the white man here. This is looking forward 
through a vista of many a generation, perhaps— but that it will come 
to pass, became, as we fully believe, assured when Wiltberger trans- 
ferred the Elizabeth emigrants from Bushrod Island to the main, and 
when Ashmun, with a handful of sick and toil-worn men, made a host 
by a blessing from on High, repulsed the barbarians who would have 
extinguished the feeble light which has gone on increasing in bright- 
ness ever since, and which will one day pervade the land now in the 
shadow of death. 

If these views are looked upon as visionary, it should be remem- 
bered how small were our own beginnings : and although it may be 
admitted that the Pilgrims by the Mayflower were socially and intel- 
lectually superior to those who landed from the Elizabeth, yet the 
capacity for improvement and self-government that has been devel- 
oped in Liberia and illustrated in America in a thousand instances 
of learning, intelligence and refinement, fully justifies the anticipa- 
tions of colonizationists. And when a prosperous and happy people 
shall have made Liberia as attractive to the colored man as America 
is to the European emigrant ; when commerce shall have bridged the 
Atlantic for an eastward, as it has for a westward march of thousands 
and tens of thousands ; when gold, already within reach from Mon- 
rovia, will do for Liberia what gold did for California in attracting 
emigration ; when ambition shall find across the sea, away from the 
influences of caste, the widest field for its exercise — then will the 



12 



Negro question be settled; not as was the question of slavery, by war 
and its attendant misery, but by the peaceful operation of causes that 
are inevitable ; and then it will be seen that even so great a wrong as 
slavery may have had, in the order of God's providence, its accompa- 
nying good in the education of a missionary nation, with a continent 
for the field of its operation. And when that time comes, the histo- 
rian ot men regenerated Africa will find among the sources of her 
light and liberty the labors of the American Colonization Society. 

On the return of Dr. Ayres to the United States, a map of the territory acquired by 
Commander Stockton and himself was made from his description, and Gen. Robert Good- 
loe Harper, one of ihe warmest and ablest among the friends of colonization, with the co- 
operation of the map maker, wrote on the engraver's proof-sheet the names that have 
since been adopted. The Latin word Liber, a free man, suggested the name of the terri- 
tory ; Mr. Monroe's invaluable aid was recognized in that of the then very humble capital. 
Bushrod Island, where the first settlers landed, was called after the President of the So- 
ciety, and Stockton creek and Ayres creek completed a nomenclature that has since be- 
come familiar. The rivers St. Paul's and Mesurado, and the cape of that name on which 
Monrovia stands, were permitted to retain the names by which they were already desig- 
nated on the maps of Africa. The maker of the map of Liberia, here referred to, is the 
present President of the Society. 



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